May 28
Today is the birthday of T-Bone Walker. He would be 116 today.
Aaron Thibeaux Walker was born in Linden, Texas on May 28, 1910 — deep East Texas, in Cass County pine country. His family moved to Dallas when he was two. He grew up in the Oak Cliff neighborhood and learned to play guitar and banjo in the street tradition. As a teenager he led Blind Lemon Jefferson through the Dallas streets, learning from the master. Then he decided to take the guitar somewhere Blind Lemon hadn’t gone: electric.
The Language Every Guitarist Still Speaks
T-Bone Walker was the father of the electric blues guitar. His recordings for Capitol in the late 1940s — “Call It Stormy Monday,” “T-Bone Shuffle” — invented the vocabulary. The bent note, the behind-the-back guitar trick, the walking around the stage while playing: all of it started with Walker. B.B. King heard him at a Dallas club around 1946 and went home a different musician. Freddie King, Albert King, Buddy Guy — they all learned a language that Walker wrote. He died March 16, 1975, in Los Angeles. But pick up any electric blues record ever made and you’re hearing Linden, Texas. Learn more at the Texas State Historical Association.